


nom de guerre

by jolach



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, im happy to pick becky !!)), too many things to be a 5 things fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 17:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16142432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolach/pseuds/jolach
Summary: “How you say name?” Sasha asks.





	nom de guerre

**Author's Note:**

> Once we found out Ovi pronounces Nicke's name the Swedish way this was always gonna happen.

Sasha’s English has gotten so much better over the past year, and he’s very proud of himself, but he’s good at talking, not writing and reading. And the way the letters match up with different sounds in this language makes no sense half the time, anyway. Seeing the name written down doesn’t help at all. He makes George repeat it to him half a dozen times instead.

“Nicklas,” George says, leaned in close with his hand covering the mic so the other tables can’t hear.

“Nicklas,” Sasha tries again. He knows it’s not quite right, his mouth trying to turn the cluster of consonants into something a little more Slavic.

“Bäckström,” George says with a tone of finality. Sasha can tell his patience is wearing thin. God damn George. If Sasha had known this was going to happen he could have practiced. Sasha, counter to general assumption, is great at practicing.

“Bäckström,” Sasha says. “Nicklas Bäckström. Nicklas Bäckström.” It’s all starting to blend together as one sound, but that doesn’t matter as long as he gets it out onstage.

“That’s good, Alex. You’ll do great,” George says, patting him on the back. Sasha gives him a big winning smile and thinks angry thoughts. If it were a different event, Sasha wouldn’t mind fucking up in front of everyone just to teach George a lesson. But this is somebody’s draft day. Sasha would prefer not to ruin the memory, especially since, based on the tape he’s seen, he really wants this guy to pass to him.

Sasha definitely doesn’t sound confident. He definitely adds an extra syllable in there somewhere. But he gets it out, and he’s very proud of himself, and, based on how a blond guy in a white shirt stands up with an expression on his face like he’s been concussed, he can’t have done that bad a job.

 

-

 

Sasha has to wait a year to confirm it, but the rookie is willing to pass to him after all.

Goddamn. If he’d known this was what he was getting, Sasha would have given a whole speech.

The rookie is talking to Greenie, like he always seems to be, but Sasha can fix that. Sasha careens lightly into him, gratified when he startles and looks at Sasha with those big lamp eyes. He’s like a sea creature. “Nice hands, Becky,” Sasha says.

Greenie groans and laughs on the rookie’s other side. “You can’t call him that.”

Sasha can do whatever Sasha wants. “Why? Needs nickname.” Sasha knows how his last name is really pronounced, now. You can find highlights from the Swedish Elitserien if you know where to look. It might be written with the same type of letters, but the rookie’s name doesn’t have any of the flat nasal vowels that Sasha’s surrounded by on all sides.

Greenie skates ahead a little and then turns around. “Becky is a girl’s name,” he says. “He’ll get chirped to fuckin’ death if we call him that.”

Sasha looks over at the rookie, whose only sign of even potential concern is the line between his eyebrows that means he’s trying to follow the English. Chirped to death. People could try. “Pretty like a girl, why not,” Sasha says, grinning.

Pretty isn’t quite the right word for him, but it makes Greenie make a disgusted noise and puts a little edge in the rookie’s eyes, so Sasha’s pleased.

“Whatever,” Greenie says, skating backwards.

The rookie spits on the ice and glances at Sasha before turning his attention back to Greenie. That rankles a little bit, until— “I’m not pretty?” the rookie says.

“Oh, fuck, no,” Greenie says, speeding up as the rookie sedately chases him and Sasha laughs.

“Greenie? I’m not pretty?”

Sasha loves Becky.

 

-

 

Sasha flops on the couch and shoves his bare feet mercilessly against Becky’s legs until Becky sighs and makes room for Sasha to slide his feet underneath.

“Asshole,” Becky says, not taking his eyes off of his game of FIFA. Sasha can fix that.

“How you say name?” he asks.

Becky makes a face that looks like he’s pissed off but really means he’s concentrating. “What?”

“Name. Your name,” Sasha says, wiggling his toes under Becky’s thigh and grinning at his soft little frown. “One mama call you. And Papa Nylander, before.” Sasha still doesn’t know shit from Swedish, but Becky’s been around a while, and Sasha’s overheard enough conversations to know he’s missing something.

“My Swedish name?” Becky says, chewing on his lip. He’s still playing his game. Sasha rolls his eyes.

“Yes, name,” he says. “Unless you don’t want me to say.”

Becky makes a face that also looks like he’s pissed off but really means he’s surprised. “No, is—that’s fine. If you want to,” he says, with those tiny clipped-off _oo_ ’s that are always going to mark him out as a stranger. “It’s Nicke.”

Sasha looks up at the ceiling, rolling the sound around in his head. “Say again?”

“Nicke.”

Sasha looks back down at him and gives it a shot. “Nick-uh?”

Becky grins at the screen.

“Shut up,” Sasha says. “Nee-kuh?”

“Close enough,” Becky says, still grinning, still looking at the screen.

“No, it’s not,” Sasha says. “Say again.” He shakes his feet under Becky’s leg, jostling him.

Becky sighs, makes a face that also looks like he’s pissed off but means he’s trying not to laugh, pauses his game, and looks over at Sasha. Sasha wins.

Then Becky launches himself up the couch and sits on Sasha’s chest, batting Sasha’s hands out of his face and wrestling him down as Sasha laughs. Sasha really wins.

Becky hovers above him, weight solid and crushing on Sasha’s midsection and hair hanging in his face. “Nicke,” he says, holding Sasha’s wrists down. Sasha watches his mouth move.

“Nee-kyuh,” Sasha tries. He thinks he’s getting close.

“Nicke,” Becky says again. Sasha gets the sense he could stay here all day.

“Nee-kyeh,” Sasha says, and this time he knows he’s close from the surprise and pleasure that blooms on Becky’s face. Nicke’s face. Sasha never knows what will do it, but it’s always worth it to find out. “Nicke,” he says again, delighted. “Nicke. Nicke. Nicke.”

“That’s me,” Nicke says.

 

-

 

Sasha has given up on making nice with the reporters. He doesn’t try to joke with them anymore, even the ones that seem OK. Picking favorites just makes it worse, later.

Nicke _looks_  more guarded, but he still tries with a few of them. Sasha can see him a few scrums over, sometimes, making the active decision to say something funny. It’s all in the eyebrows. He’s too generous with the media. Half the time they don’t even get it.

They ask Sasha questions about Nicke, sometimes. Not as often as the other way around—Sasha has seen that, too, the way Nicke’s eyes go tight and cold. But they do ask about Nicke every once in a while. Sasha doesn’t call him Nicke, then. The press can get by with Nicky.

 

-

 

Nicke turns 25 with Sasha in Moscow, where they are playing hockey like fucking gods.

The word had gotten out to the fans—they’d made him a banner and given him a huge cheer when he stepped on the ice. Sasha expects Nicke to hate it, to make a sour face and ignore everything, but he laughs instead, sunny and dangerous.

Sasha bumps into him during warmups. “Gotta win tonight now,” Sasha says.

“I know,” Nicke says.

They fall behind 3-0 to Severstal, and it’s games like these that give Sasha bad habits, because they can be down by three goals and Nicke can still take the game over by himself. He has a four-point night, assisting on Sasha’s two goals, including the game-winner, and then adding a goal for himself.

Sasha jumps him in the locker room, scrubbing a hand through his sweaty hair and shouting joyfully in his face.

“I have to make my own birthday presents now?” Nicke says slyly. Komarov laughs. Sasha ignores him.

“I helped,” Sasha says, laying a smacking kiss to Nicke’s cheek before going to his stall to get undressed.

“You helped,” Nicke repeats to himself. He pulls his jersey over his head. “What was the name on the banner?”

Sasha is busy with his skates, loosening the laces. “Hm?”

“On the banner they had. The name on the jersey. Wasn’t mine,” Nicke says. Sasha looks up at him. Everybody looks good when they win, but it especially suits Nicke, chest heaving and face glowing. Sasha bought him that necklace.

Sasha thinks, tries to remember the banner. Oh. “It says Kolya,” he says, grinning. “They try to make you Russian, very sweet.”

“Kolya?” Nicklas repeats. Sasha desperately wants the lockout to end, and he also wants Nicke to keep halfheartedly learning Russian forever.

“For Nikolai,” Sasha says. “For when you are close. If you are Russian, your friends call you Kolya.” He finishes getting his skates off and stands to get started on his jersey and pads. “Moscow loves you, Kolya.”

Nicke snorts and bends to his own skates. “Moscow loves you,” he says. “I’m just bonus.”

Sasha heaves his pads over his shoulders and frowns. That’s not true, though he feels a treacherous swell of pride at the thought—here is what I love, and you will love what I love because I have earned that right, because I have made what I love part of myself. That would not be the worst thing, but it’s not what’s happening now.

“No,” he says, working on his shinpads. “They love me, yes.” Nicke huffs a laugh, but Sasha keeps going. “And they see I love you.” Nicke has given up fighting him on this point after so many years. Sasha smiles. “But then you show them why, Kolya. And they forget all about me. Very hurtful, actually.”

Nicke shakes his head at his skates, but Sasha can see his smile. It is still disorienting to see him here, in this locker room, as if Sasha by force of will has pulled him back in time to rewrite Sasha’s past. Sasha is happy to do it; he’d have Nicke staying in his house with him if Nicke didn’t insist on living at the Dynamo training center like a madman.

He wonders what it feels like for Nicke to be here in Sasha’s old life. He hasn’t asked. He has half a thought to offer to go to Sweden, next lockout. To make things fair.

 

-

 

Sasha never goes to Sweden. Nicke always does, going back home to lick his wounds every summer. Sasha figures he can leave Nicke that, at least. By now, everything they’ve touched together is weighed down. Time travel works both ways, it turns out, the past turning up everywhere whether you want it to or not. Good to have something untouched. Sasha can’t fix everything.

So Nicke lives in his phone every summer, popping up in group threads and Instagram and even the occasional text. Sasha gives him a hard time about how much golf he plays, and Nicke tells him he’s going to get skin cancer from never wearing a shirt, and by the time September rolls around they’re ready to try again.

So maybe Sasha follows more Swedes on Instagram than you’d expect. That still counts as keeping his distance.

The whole country seems to have a nickname for him. Sasha doesn’t know how you pronounce Bäckis, or if Nicke likes to be called that. Sasha doesn’t ask.

 

-

 

Nicke looks miserable penned in by reporters, pale under the hallway fluorescents and making the kind of unblinking eye contact that means he wishes you were dead, so Sasha, being a natural leader and a great friend, makes it worse.

He cups his hands around his mouth as he walks by and rolls his r’s theatrically. _“All Star Nicklas Bäckström!”_

He catches Nicke’s eye on the way past. He’s going to pay for that. He’ll take it.

 

-

 

Nick Backstrom. Who the fuck is _Nick Backstrom_.

Nicke Bäckström asks for his water without ice at restaurants. He has the same brand of snus mail-ordered to him from Sweden. Nicke rips all the inside tags off his hoodies because he hates the way they scratch against his neck. He ripped them off half of Sasha’s in Moscow.

He’s a picky piece of shit, is the point.

Sasha’s not sure when it started, but it feels like he hears it every day now, from media (typical), coaching staff (typical), and even some of the newer guys on the team (unacceptable). He supposes it’s kind of a compliment that the North Americans think highly enough of him to try to cram him into a them-shaped sound, like how Sasha became Alex before he was drafted.

What’s annoying is that Nicke doesn’t seem to care.

Sasha’s even heard him introduce himself that way a few times so far during the preseason. Sure, it makes things easier, and Sasha does it all the time. That’s different.

Sasha cycles out of a preseason scrimmage and sits back on the bench, shuffling down next to Beags. He looks out at his team on the ice. So many of them are new. Babies. They don’t know any better.

The space on his left fills up suddenly. He looks over at Nicke, hair sweaty and face pink and eyes blazing. Nicke spits out his mouthguard. Sasha gets a whole secondary adrenaline rush.

“Hey, you forget what offsides is over the summer?” Nicke says.

Sasha rolls his eyes. “So sorry.” Yeah, he fucked up a play. Nobody else even noticed.

Nicke’s got a hand out of his glove, pointing. Sasha tries not to smile. “You’re not a fucking kid. We’ve got enough of those, don’t need more.”

“Go practice your fucking faceoffs, how about that,” Sasha says, thrilled.

Nicke glowers at him. “Do it fucking right,” he says, then pops his mouthguard in.

There’s a whistle. Sasha stands, grinning. “Missed you,” he says, and throws himself over the boards.

 

-

 

Sasha doesn’t have any particular fondness for Philadelphia, but he can appreciate the way the city loses their goddamn minds when they win the football championship.

“Holy shit,” he says, watching a video Tom has pulled up on his phone of a crowd of people collapsing a hotel awning by jumping for joy. “Awesome.”

“Gotta give ‘em points for effort,” Tom says. He swipes through a few more videos, leaning in the seat next to Sasha on the plane. “Oh, this one is hilarious.”

It’s a shaky video of a crowd parading through the dark, sparklers and poppers going off in the background. The crowd is chanting—that can’t be right.

“What they say?” Sasha asks.

“‘Big Dick Nick,’” Tom says, giggling. “Their backup quarterback, or something. Won the game.” He shrugs. “Maybe has a huge dick, I dunno.”

“Nice,” Sasha says. He’s always felt it should be more normal to celebrate big-dickedness publicly. He’s done his part. And speaking of which—

Sasha leans out into the aisle and calls up to the next row. “Nicke!”

There’s a shuffle. Nicke pokes his head out from his seat, hair mussed and one earbud pulled out. He raises his eyebrows and waits.

“You want new nickname?” Sasha asks.

Nicke blinks slowly. “Probably not,” he says, but he doesn’t turn around.

It’s late, and they’ve lost two games in a row, and they’re on their way to get in a fucking fistfight with the Blue Jackets in a home and home, so Sasha resists the urge to just start chanting at Nicke about his dick in the middle of the plane. Later. Instead he just takes the phone from Tom’s hand and sends Nicke a link.

Nothing wrong with having a big dick. It’d be a weird thing to chirp somebody about if Nicke weren’t so uninterested in talking about it. Or taking his clothes off. Sometimes Nicke needs Sasha to remind him that he’s a little bit of an asshole underneath everything else.

Sasha sees Nicke look down at his phone when the message comes in, and then watches as his face absolutely does not move as he watches it. Then he just looks up at Sasha and raises an eyebrow.

This is where somebody else would say, _Been looking at my dick, buddy?_  And Sasha would know how to shoot something back, like, _Can’t help it, you’ve been waving it in my face so much._

Sasha just shrugs up the aisle at Nicke and smiles with his tongue between his teeth. Yeah. He’s looked at Nicke. Nicke knows this.

Nicke rolls his eyes and taps something out on his phone before turning back around. Sasha looks down when his phone buzzes in his lap—and Tom’s does, too, in his hand.

Nicke sent the video to the whole team.

 

-

 

Barry’s team talk is done. Everyone in the hallway has been high-fived. Sasha has lifted V in a full-body hug and spun him around as a thank you for scoring the gamewinner. Captain business is done.

Sasha goes to find him, two bottles of Gatorade in his hand.

He can’t take the spring out of his step as he heads toward the exam room. He knows Nicke will understand.

One game away from the third round.

Nicke’s sitting on an exam table in sweatpants and a Caps t-shirt. His right hand is cocooned in gauze. His beard looks like shit. He’s smiling at Sasha.

“Hiding back here, lazy fuck?” Sasha booms. “Make us do all the work for you?”

“Figured it was about time,” Nicke says. His eyes are a little swimmy in a way that means he’s got the good painkillers already. That explains the smile. “That assist was shit.”

Sasha scrubs a hand through Nicke’s filthy hair, laughing when he ducks away. “V still put it in,” he says. “Where’s the trainer?” It’s just them under the sickly fluorescents.

Nicke makes a dismissive noise. “Gone to fill a prescription.”

“Party time,” Sasha says, shifting his weight and shoving his free hand in the pocket of the sweatpants he’d pulled on. “How broken are you?”

Nicke makes the same noise again. “I’ll play.”

Sasha snorts. “With what hand?” The gauze is whatever. The story is the way Nicke is instinctively cradling the hand without thinking about it. His body knows better than to use it.

Nicke looks up at him under murderous eyebrows. “I’ll play.”

Sasha’s body knows better than to argue when Nicke’s voice gets like that. “OK, baby, OK,” he says, leaning back on his heels. “I tell Tiger not to get a big head.” Sasha reaches for something to say and grabs hold of the truth. “Think I’m do this without you, anyway? No chance, baby.”

Nicke rolls his eyes and leans back, letting his shoulder rest against the cinderblock wall behind the table. “Don’t call me that,” he says, but his little loopy smile is back.

What? “‘Baby’?” Nicke nods and lolls his head just a tiny bit. “Call you ‘baby’ all the time.” For years. “Call _everyone_  ‘baby,’” Sasha says, defensive. It’s a classic.

“I know,” Nicke says, letting his eyes fall shut.

Sasha sits with that for a second. Lets it pool in his chest. The skin under Nicke’s eyes looks so thin. How is he getting home tonight?

“So what should I call you?” Sasha says, voice light, hand fisted in his pocket.

Nicke’s eyes flutter open again. “Nicke,” he says, like Sasha’s a dumbass.

“I mean,” Sasha says, using all his instincts to try to stretch this feeling out without snapping it, “When I’m—when I am feeling nice about you. I should call you what?”

Nicke rolls his eyes again and sits up straight, the paper underneath him on the table crinkling. He licks his lips. Sasha holds out the Gatorade, and Nicke takes the orange one but doesn’t open it. “Nicke,” he says again.

“Nicke, Nicke, Nicke,” Sasha says, teasing. Nicke shakes his head. “Won’t work, call you that all the time.”

Nicke looks up at Sasha suspiciously. Lamp eyes. “Don’t feel nice about me all the time?”

He’s teasing. Sasha wants to touch his hair again.

“Still. Get bored,” Sasha says, tapping the Gatorade bottle against his thigh. “You gotta come up with something better, you want me to change.”

Nicke kicks a leg out lightly, catch Sasha in the shin. “Fine.”

Sasha loves to win. “Who is driving you home?”

 

-

 

“After me, I give it to you, baby,” Sasha says. His forehead presses against Nicke’s forehead, his cheek to his cheek. “Stanley Cup, baby.”

“Yeah, OK,” Nicke says. There’s something knocked loose in his voice. Sasha wins.

 

-

 

Nicke is in the hotel bed with him when Sasha wakes up. He’s wearing at least two shirts and smells like five kinds of death.

Sasha isn’t much better. He is at least wearing fewer clothes, which makes it easier to drag himself into the shower. He doesn’t bother looking at the clock or his phone. Sasha invites anybody to attempt to tell him what the fuck to do today.

Sasha’s never smiled so much in a hotel shower.

When he gets out, Nicke has his head in the toilet.

Sasha puts a hand on the back of Nicke’s neck, scratching a little up into his hair as he retches. “Want help?” Sasha says quietly. Nicke makes a pained noise that sounds like a no. “OK. Shower’s nice. Come back after,” Sasha says, pulling a towel off the rack and drying himself off perfunctorily in the freezing hotel AC before crawling under the duvet and falling back the fuck asleep.

When he wakes up a second time, Nicke is burrowed under the comforter with damp hair and his nose pressed against Sasha’s shoulder. Sasha finds a water bottle on the nightstand and drains half of it. Then he touches Nicke’s hair.

Nicke twitches a little, then cracks his eyes open skeptically. Then he sees Sasha.

Sasha smiles back. “Nicke,” he says, and that’s all it takes for Nicke to start wildly smacking at his arm under the duvet in joy.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Nicke says, grabbing at Sasha’s arm and shaking him. Sasha doesn’t know what to do but smile. He’d known—he’d felt it, before, when he woke up, but seeing the weightlessness in his heart reflected back in Nicke’s eyes makes him feel like he’s gonna shoot through the ceiling. It’s not just Sasha. Sasha isn’t alone. Nicke is here, in this, with him. Nicke’s back.

“I know,” he says, in case it doesn’t show on his face the same way. “I know, I know, it’s—” he runs out of words and grabs a fistful of Nicke’s hair instead. Nicke beams at him. “So much.”

“O,” Nicke says, fingers digging into his arm. Sasha has always liked that nickname, even if his last name doesn’t really have that sound in it. The roundness of it, the simple way it falls from Nicke’s mouth. “Alex. It’s done.” There’s a frantic edge to Nicke’s joy. Sasha can feel it buzzing off of him. The skin that marks them as separate feels theoretical at best. “Fuck, O,” Nicke says, eyes wide, artless. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Sasha says, though he knows. He lies back flat, Nicke half-following to prop up next to him. Sasha still has a handful of his hair. “Don’t be. I am—it’s the same,” he says. Sasha’s never chosen where his scar tissue has shown up. He didn’t expect different from Nicke. It hadn’t felt like all that much until the two of them woke up new this morning. Sasha didn’t expect that, either. “I know,” he says again, and he means it. “Feel what you feel.”

“O,” Nicke says again, or maybe, “Oh.” Sasha likes the first one better.

Sasha looks at him. “Of course you put clothes back on to pass out again,” he says. Sasha thinks that Wizards shirt belongs to him. “Thief.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Nicke says, prim, but there’s something else in his face, schooled into plausible calm, when he puts a hand down, lightly and unmistakably, on Sasha’s stomach.

Sasha doesn’t hide his sharp inhale. Shooting through the ceiling seems more possible than this. Nicke’s hands are warmer than he thought they would be. Sasha isn’t alone.

“I don’t know—” Nicke says, eyes darting over Sasha’s face, and Sasha needs to show him, needs to do something equally impossible. He slides his hand from Nicke’s hair to cup his jaw. His terrible beard. This man.

“OK,” Sasha says. He thumbs across Nicke’s cheek roughly and rattles out a breath when Nicke’s fingers stroke lightly across his stomach. “I feel what you feel. Promise.”

What a reckless thing to promise. Sasha means it.

Nicke keeps his fingers skating in circles on Sasha’s belly, eyes intent. Sasha gets it. He doesn’t know how to touch Nicke, has never even—touching Nicke? Just because it should be done? Nicke has never been in the category of things Sasha can touch before. Not _touch_  touch, not _Nicke_  Nicke.

They have gotten so far with only half of each other. Sasha feels the hair on his arms stand up and lets himself shiver so Nicke can see.

“Fuck, O,” Nicke says. Sasha finally lets his hand fall from Nicke’s hair so he can stretch out the way he wants to under Nicke’s touch. “I didn’t—I mean, I knew it would matter, obviously, Jesus—” he starts laughing.

“You not waiting for me?” Sasha says, and Nicke laughs harder. “Secret reason to win Cup?” Sasha hadn’t realized how many rules were stacked on top of that need until they’d wound up alone in a room without any of them. Things had changed so slowly for so long. “Want something long time, then you get...” Sasha shrugs. “Want has to go somewhere new, maybe.”

Nicke scratches his nails feather-light across Sasha’s stomach, and Sasha hisses. “Not so new,” Nicke says, his eyes fixed on the way Sasha’s body reacts, learning a new system. Maybe he’s never touched a man like this. Sasha certainly hasn’t.

Sasha’s most of the way hard from a hand on his torso and joyful disbelief. “Nicke.”

“That’s me,” Nicke says almost absently, eyes still flicking from Sasha’s abs to his hands to his chest, spotting reactions almost as fast as Sasha feels them.

“That’s you,” Sasha says, watching him watch him. “Nicke, Nicke, Nicke.”

Nicke looks up at him and raises his eyebrows. “How can you need more attention?”

Sasha grins and tries to figure out where to touch Nicke next. “What, you think I only say name for attention?”

“Yes,” Nicke says flatly, but his hand keeps moving. Sasha thinks about pressing a finger to Nicke’s lips, but he can’t get his hand to move.

“I say because you like,” Sasha says. He stretches a leg out just a little under the duvet and finds one of Nicke’s calves, warm when Sasha lets them slide together. What a simple thing to have never felt before.

Nicke hums and looks up at Sasha. “That’s why it works,” he says matter-of-factly.

Sasha lifts his hand, finally. He skates two fingers along the stretched-out neck of Nicke’s shirt—his shirt—feeling the worn cotton flatten beneath them. “Glad you’re here.”

Nicke smiles. “What do you think,” he says, sliding his hand up to Sasha’s chest. “If TJ gets into the cab instead last night, you let him do this?”

He rubs a thumb roughly over Sasha’s nipple, and Sasha fists his hand in Nicke’s shirt at the bolt of pleasure that pins him to the bed. Nicke licks his lips, a line of concentration between his eyebrows. Sasha has no idea how he’s doing this. Sasha can at least make sure he knows how it feels.

“Don’t know,” Sasha says, which is true. “TJ is very pretty—” Nicke starts laughing, and Sasha has to stop and watch.

“You do like pretty,” Nicke says.

Sasha tugs on a curl, drying wild. “And shiny,” he says. “Shiny cup. Shiny Nicke.”

Nicke rolls his eyes and bats Sasha’s hand away before letting his hand drop speculatively to Sasha’s chest.

“It’s OK,” Sasha says at nothing.

“I know,” Nicke says, frowning. He’s still leaned on his side half-above Sasha. Sasha realizes with a start that Nicke’s been touching him with his busted hand. Nicke chews on his lip like he’s trying not to smile. “I don’t know what to do,” he says finally.

Impossible. “Try something,” Sasha says. He reaches up and hooks two fingers into the collar of Nicke’s shirt. Nicke’s collarbone presses against his knuckles. “We practice, baby.”

Nicke shakes his head, but in the way that means Sasha wins. Nicke leans closer, and Sasha lets his hand slip around to the back of Nicke’s neck, and Sasha forgets to close his eyes until Nicke’s forehead presses against his.

Nicke’s cheek presses to his cheek. Sasha’s nose nudges against Nicke’s nose. For a long moment, nobody breathes.

In theory, Nicke’s lips touching his lips shouldn’t be that different from any of the rest of it.

In theory, none of this should have happened at all.

Sasha freezes, just for a second, just for long enough to be sorry for, and then he kisses back in kind, dry and precise and careful, and then he does what feels right, which is to open up and give Nicke everything.

And then everybody remembers to breathe.

Suddenly everything is very loud, the wet sounds of their mouths and the sharp gasps of trying to breathe around it and the rucking fabric as Sasha tries to shove a hand under Nicke’s shirt to feel him. The unconscious little sounds that Nicke is making that Sasha’s brain wants to recognize. It’s so much feedback, Nicke’s fingers on his jaw, Nicke’s familiar weight pressing him down, Nicke’s chapped lips under his teeth.

It’s been so long since Sasha has had to tell his body what to do. He keeps getting distracted, trying to feel everything at once—he needs another brain, a million other brains, one for each hand, one in his mouth, one in— _fuck_ , one for Nicke’s thigh between his, one just for that—

“ _Shit,_ ” and then Nicke is pulling back, and Sasha opens his eyes to look at him. Hair hanging down, eyes like a stranglehold, just the same, just the same except for the blood on his mouth. “You fucking bit me,” Nicke says like he can’t believe it and it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

“Fuck,” Sasha says, and Nicke drops his head to his shoulder to laugh silently. “Fuck.” Sasha wraps his arms around Nicke’s shaking frame and grins into his hair. Sasha’s a quick learner. “Shut up,” he says, which makes Nicke laugh harder. Sasha plants a foot and rolls them over, Nicke landing rumpled and red-mouthed in the pillows. “Shut up,” Sasha says, and dips to clean up his mess. “Let me try again,” he mumbles against Nicke’s smile, and he does.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and big smacking kisses as always to kingsoftheimpossible and angularmomentum for aiding and abetting. On tumblr @ hyggles. Comments are how I win.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] nom de guerre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112557) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)




End file.
